DeBary Student, 13, Charged With Making School Threats

Date Added: December 14, 2022 3:07 pm

Laura Williams, Office of Public Affairs & Media Relations

DEBARY STUDENT, 13, CHARGED WITH MAKING SCHOOL THREATS
7^th-Grader Threatened to Shoot 3 Students, School in Social Media Posts

A 13-year-old student has been charged with making written threats on social media to shoot three classmates and his school, and aggravated assault after he posted a picture of himself pointing a gun at a student’s head.

Colton Herring (DOB 03/06/2009), a seventh-grader at Trinity Christian Academy in Deltona, was arrested Monday night, and several firearms were seized from his family’s home during execution of a search warrant Tuesday.  

Witnesses reported Herring wrote messages on Snapchat with specific threats including: “I got 32 rounds for u” and “I got a hollow point wit ur name on it.”

During a group Snapchat video chat, witnesses reported he threatened to shoot up his school. In another video, they said he held a gun to another student’s head. He also sent a photo of himself holding a black pistol while sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle.

Herring was charged with three counts of making written threats to kill or conduct a mass shooting, and one charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was transported to the Volusia Family Resource Center and later to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

In a follow-up investigation Tuesday, detectives interviewed Herring’s parents, who declined to allow a search of their home. Detectives obtained a search warrant, which they executed Tuesday afternoon, seizing several guns and rounds of ammunition from the house. In addition to two handguns in the garage and a rifle and shotgun in the trunk of a car, detectives found a 6-round magazine in Herring’s bedroom dresser drawer. Ammunition was found in and around a home office cabinet that had been pried open, as well as in the master bedroom.